“The only difference between you and me is that you pretend that you’re doing this for the intangible benefit of others, while I know it’s wrong, but I do it anyway. Utilitarianism versus deontology.”
B A S I C S
Name: Eugene “Sully” Sullivan Specialty: Thief Date of Birth: 06/01/1989 Place of Birth: New York, New York Faceclaim: Chace Crawford
B I O G R A P H Y
At first it may seem that Eugene Sullivan was born into an insulated life with a stable and financially-secure family, but his childhood was far from happy. As an only child, Sully was the sole heir and thereby the recipient of all of his parents’ attention and aspirations. Discipline, routine, and structure are three constants that Sully can recall from early memory. Sundays were spent under the arched, vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows of the church under the burning gaze of a God who wasn’t real. His father, a politician, would rarely have enough time to be home, but when he was, he would try to shape his son into his own image and educate him on the ways of the higher class. Time spent with his father consisted of teaching him politics, law, and how to appear flawless in order so that his rivals would have no foothold upon which to destroy him. His mother, who had been a Principal Dancer for her ballet company in her youth, would drag Sully to dance classes—first ballroom, then jazz, then modern, then ballet. Long hours were spent at the studio—either learning or being babysat by a volunteer in the room over while pupils of varying age brackets funneled in and out for their sessions. When Sully turned six, he was enrolled in gymnastics classes to further perfect his form. No day would go by where Sully didn’t feel the stifling guilt of being a disappointment or the crippling weight of his parents’ expectations.
Rebellion started discretely and in bursts—stealing papers from his father’s office, taking money from the offering plate, selling his mother’s jewelry when she turned her back—all while still maintaining the guise of being the perfect son. Yet, he knew that he could never win freedom from his parents while staying under the same roof. Sully graduated from the School of American Ballet and by seventeen, joined the New York City Ballet. While Sully was initially planning to obey his mother and stay with the ballet company, the prospect of joining a modern circus troupe based in San Francisco came to Sully’s attention. It was a haphazard audition, but twenty-two years of suffocation under the watchful eyes of his parents amounted to a decision that would lead him away from the stark concrete lines of the city that he had grown accustomed to.
Sully had some reservations that he was making a mistake, but even that wasn’t enough to stop him from buying a one-way plane ticket to the LAX. And once he settled into his new life, it had seemed like joining the circus was one of the best, albeit also one of the only, independent decisions that he had ever made. The troupe was a hive-mind of different people who had forged their own social networks in buildings and rooms next to other communities and cultures unlike their own. Appreciated as one of the formative underground performance groups, Sully flourished alongside the troupe in the spotlight. And as Sully traveled from city to city internationally with the group, he resumed his career in theft. His heists became more frequent and complex without the time restraints that his career of a professional ballet dancer required. Once a month, maybe twice, a glittering gemstone would be stolen. Rolls of money would just disappear. Priceless paintings would vanish. More importantly, he was never caught. To the police department and the public, he was a ghost and it wasn’t long before he gained a reputation as one of the world’s most elusive and economically damaging thieves. Media called him “the Wraith”.
Injuries happen—accidents happen, but for Sully, the thing that would incapacitate him was slow and insidious. To be performing rigorously for years of his life took its toll on Sully, with the peak years of his physical output with the troupe burning him out beyond repair. It’s no secret that many acrobats will retire in their 20s if they push themselves too hard, or if they don’t keep strict health regimens, and unfortunately for Sully, naively ignoring a pain in his leg cost him his dream job. What started as a pinprick developed into an immobilizing agony, and in missing weeks of practice while on medical leave, it became evident that someone else would need to take Sully’s role. The troupe returned with the grave news that it’d be best advised for him to find a new, low-impact profession and offered him a position as a technician, but Sully politely declined and quit the troupe all together. Perhaps in the future, when his injuries completely healed, he’d return to the stage. Until then, he resigned himself to living in Manhattan by himself and doing his next most exhilarating hobby after performing: thievery.
S P E C I A L T Y
The Sullivans never struggled economically, so for Sully, stealing was never a means for survival. Growing up, Sully had the strange combination of being diligently studied in some ways, but also ignored in others. If anything, stealing was a way to get his parents’ attention, but only a few phone calls from his father were enough to get his minor crimes glossed over. His thefts became gradually more elaborate, and he soon found that nothing but a performance was quite as intoxicating as a successful heist. Thievery was a career catered to his particular set of talents in dance and gymnastics.
J O I N E D T H E T E A M
After leaving the troupe, Sully wasn’t immediately in peak condition to be maneuvering in and out of buildings, so he returned to New York City intending to take a short hiatus from crime. He stayed at his family penthouse for a few months with his parents, who did not stop reprimanding and ridiculing him for wasting his potential and trying to run away from his “calling”. During his entire stay, he obeyed every command from his physical therapist and exerted himself during practice in order to recover so that he could leave again. As his injuries healed, he began to look for jobs around the area and jump back into the arts and stole small amounts of money in order to pay for the career that his parents were unwilling to fund. While he was searching, he received a phone call from an unknown number who asked if Eugene Sullivan was interested in a job opening. Thinking it was just one of his father’s friends, he was about to hang up when they reworded the question and asked if the Wraith was looking for a job.
P E R S O N A L I T Y
+ Resourceful, charming, determined, witty – Cynical, egotistical, insubordinate, pessimistic
Q U I R K S
• An article in the New York Times alluded to his identity being a female for whatever reason and gained public interest. It was simultaneously hilarious to Sully as well as another means of security that kept the public a couple of more steps away from discovering his true identity. While he was working by himself, he did not put himself above signing Love, the Wraith and XOXO in lipstick on the window as he escaped. • Sully has immaculate handwriting. His doodles on napkins often equate to calligraphy. While he was with the circus troupe, he would occasionally help the artists paint the signs. • In elementary school, Sully had a stutter. Although he went to speech therapy and lost his stutter, he still has some lingering anxiety. He occasionally struggles from panic attacks, but he’s learned to cover most of its signs from the people around him. • After years of pretending in front of his parents, to learning how to win against his opponents from his father, to acting in certain productions, Sully has mastered the art of acting. He can easily shift from one persona to another and assume the personality of a stranger.
C O N N E C T I O N S
{ Three connections. To be added when possible. }
